A decade ago, Jesse Ramos, who was then a freshman at Guilderland High School, told the school board, “Basically, teenagers need more sleep.”

He cited copious research that adolescents are biologically driven to sleep longer and later than adults do, and argued for a later start to the high-school day.

Last month, Guilderland School Board member Catherine Barber broached the subject again. She cited the recent directive from the American Academy of Pediatrics. “In a nutshell,” said Barber, “they recommend delaying start times at middle and high school.” Teens, she said, are sleepy and not attending to their classwork as well as they might be. Barber referred to the current emphasis on academic performance and suggested the topic be revisited.

“What can we do to help our students not fall asleep in class?” she asked.

Other board members correctly pointed out that, while the research is not disputed, the solution would have to be regional because of both shared academic and sports programs.

Guilderland, as a district, has spent considerable money and effort in the last decade to examine the problem. The time has come to act.

As Guilderland is currently embroiled in looking at the most efficient use of its buildings, transportation is a natural corollary.

In 2006, the district hired a consultant, Transportation Advisory Services, paying $9,850 for a 90-day study and report, which, among other things, recommended changing the order in which the high-school, elementary-school, and middle-school days begin and end in order to allow runs with fewer buses thereby saving money.

Guilderland bus routes operate nominally on a three-tiered system — high school students are first with a day beginning at 7:30 a.m. followed by elementary and then middle school students.

“Although the district considers itself triple tripped,” the consultant wrote, “the tight bell times…have the effect of negating the cost benefits of triple tripping because…tight bell times increase the need for additional buses to complete the routes in less time.”

Another inefficiency, the consultant wrote is, “In Guilderland, the buses traverse the entire district for high-school students, then have 40 minutes to separate into the elementary zones, then have 25 minutes to again traverse the entire district for the middle-school students…These factors result in an inefficient use of drivers and vehicles,” the consultant wrote, outlining several suggested changes.

The next year, in 2007, a task force told the school board that a new transportation schedule must be built rather than amending the existing plan, and any changes should be driven by instructional priorities and should be part of the collective bargaining process with the teachers’ union.

The task force struggled with many problems — a district that covers more than 50 square miles, has high-density traffic on Route 20, and a high school and middle school that are 5.6 miles apart as well as requirements to transport students to private schools and a variety of special-education programs. The co-chairs concluded there was no “eureka” solution.

There were “too many demands to provide everybody’s first choice,” said Gregory Aidala, the superintendent at the time. The task force — made up of parents, teachers, students, administrators, staff, school-board members, and the transportation supervisor — tried to make everyone happy, he said, and therefore couldn’t recommend a change. “We at least outlined all the issues,” he said.

The school board president at the time, Richard Weisz, said, “I’ve always been a big believer that, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

Defining a problem is good but solving it is better. And we believe something is broken that needs to be fixed.

School leaders often say that student safety is a top priority even ahead of learning.

Adolescents who get enough sleep have a reduced risk of being overweight or suffering depression, according to Judith Owens, lead author of the Academy of American Pediatrics policy statement, “School Start Times for Adolescents,” which was published in September’s issue of Pediatrics. Owens goes on to state that adolescents who get enough sleep are less likely to be involved in automobile accidents and have better grades, higher standardized test scores, and an overall better quality of life.

The AAP recommends middle schools and high schools delay the start of class to 8:30 a.m. or later to align schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents whose sleep-wake cycles begin to shift up to two hours later at the start of puberty. Biologically, because of changes in their circadian rhythms, adolescents have trouble falling asleep before 11 p.m. and waking up before 8 a.m.

A National Sleep Foundation poll found that 59 percent of students in sixth through eighth grades and a whopping 87 percent of American high school students were getting fewer than the recommended 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep on school nights. The reasons include homework, extracurricular activities, after-school jobs, and the use of technology that keeps kids up late.

The AAP estimates that 40 percent of American high schools, like Guilderland’s, start before 8 a.m. while only 15 percent start at 8:30 a.m. or later.

At least 1,000 high schools have pushed back the start time, some by switching with elementary schools, since younger children tend to fall to sleep earlier and, in turn, wake up earlier.

The results have been stunning. A University of Minnesota study funded by the Centers for Disease Control, looking at more than 9,000 students in Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming, found there was less tardiness, higher grades, less depression, and fewer teen car crashes. They found the later the start time, the greater the benefits.

Researchers at Harvard and Oxford used international data on sleep patterns from more than 150,000 people to conclude that 10 a.m. is the ideal start time for high school, according to their study published in August in Learning, Media and Technology.

While a stumbling block to early start times, at Guilderland and elsewhere, has been the argument that it would impede after-school sports, since there would be less playing time before dark, we advise looking at a March study published in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics.

Researchers considered the injury records and self-reported sleep times of 112 athletes at a combined middle-high school in Los Angeles and discovered that athletes averaging less than eight hours of sleep a night had a 70 percent chance of having a sports-related injury. The amount of sleep trumped all other factors.

Teens can’t help when they fall asleep; it’s biology confirmed by research since at least the 1990s. But we, as a society, can allow them to get the sleep their bodies and minds require by changing the time school starts.

Teenagers are seriously sleep deprived.  A recent poll by the National Sleep Foundation found 60 percent of children under age 18 complain of being tired during the day and 15 percent said they fell asleep at school during the year.

Sure, we support federal legislation on this — there’s a bill backed by the National Sleep Foundation aptly titled “Zzz’s to A’s” — but we have more hope for community resolutions.

We urge our local educational leaders — from the Capital Regional Board of Cooperative Educational Services to various interscholastic leagues — to not let another decade go by before high school start times are pushed back. The well-being of our children depends on it.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer